The Cigarette Killer

by Claudia Hall Christian

  Seth looked at Jocelyn for a moment.

  “That’s a complicated answer,” Seth said. “I’ve told you about finding the bodies and being completely lost on what might help.”

  Jocelyn’s head went up and down in a nod.

  “It’s hard to imagine now, with all of this technology everywhere,” Seth said. “Cell phones, video cameras in everyone’s pocket, social media that lets you know exactly what’s going on . . .”

  Seth’s voice faded out. It was clear that he was uncomfortable with the topic. Knowing Seth, Ava saw that he was embarrassed. She looked at the audience and wondered how they were judging him. Seth raised a shoulder in a shrug and looked down at the corner of the table.

  “The pressure was tremendous,” Seth said. “My mother was still alive then, and she was terrified. We knew the perpetrator was vicious. He kept his victims alive for a month, at least, and did whatever he wanted to them. Denver was a fairly small city. People never locked their doors until this murder case. The pressure on Mitch and me was . . . unbelievable. I . . .”

  Seth cleared his throat.

  “By that time, I’d sold symphonies, played in large venues, hung around a lot of huge egos — musician, record company people, my agent . . .,” Seth nodded but didn’t look up. “I thought I knew pressure.”

  “You were also in Củ Chi,” Jocelyn said. “Vietnam.”

  “Tunnels in Vietnam,” Seth said. “Right, playing the piano got me ready for the tunnels, but not even the tunnels prepared me for this. People changed. Right in front of my eyes. People I’d known all my life went from being fairly stable to being paranoid of every sound. The city shut down. Restaurants were empty after sundown. No one went out at night.”

  Seth nodded and looked up at Jocelyn.

  “The press was breathing down my neck,” Seth said. “My captain kept telling me that he would let the entire world know that I had failed if I didn’t produce an ‘O’Malley miracle’ and now! I didn’t really care what the world thought; but the pressure of having to be miraculous . . . It was hard.”

  Seth took a breath. He raised an eyebrow at the recording device.

  “Just tell your story,” Jocelyn said. “Let the future sort out itself.”

  Seth nodded.

  “Mitch was sick,” Seth said. “I thought this case would kill him. And . . .”

  Seth paused.

  “I don’t know why I don’t want to tell you this. Protecting Mitch, I guess,” Seth said. He looked up at Jocelyn. “Mitch smoked. Cigarettes. He picked up the habit when we were at East High. He had to quit when we were in Vietnam because the smell of American Tobacco, even coming through your sweat, could get you killed in the tunnels. Mitch was diagnosed with sarcoid maybe ten years after we got back. We were sitting in the Denver Police Station when he got the diagnosis.

  “He was upset. He’d wanted to have kids. He wanted to live . . . I thought he’d be my best friend for the rest of my life. We never thought that Vietnam would take that away from us. He was . . .”

  Seth choked up. He paused for a moment before clearing his throat.

  “So, we’re sitting in the Denver Police Station, and he gets the news that he’s dying and that the VA isn’t going to pay for treatment,” Seth said. “Even though I had money, it was a big blow. It just felt so unfair. We’d gone to war. We’d done everything asked of us. We’d solved a bunch of cases and saved lives and all of that. And in return, Mitch gets sick with some crazy-assed disease. So, Mitch said something like, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to smoke.’”

  “Yes, he did,” Captain Ferguson said.

  A wave of laughter broke some of the emotional tension in the room.

  “Turns out, one of the few things that actually helps with the sarcoid is cigarette smoke,” Seth said. He shrugged. “It’s a big secret. The doctors don’t want anyone to know because cigarettes cause cancer and the like. But shit, Mitch was dying anyway.”

  Seth took a breath and slowly let it out.

  “Did you smoke?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Never,” Seth said with a shake of his head. “Playing the piano is takes real physical stamina and strength. I’d never risk it. But Mitch smoked.”

  Seth sat up a little taller.

  “We were at down Lockheed Martin,” Seth said. “We were looking at some remains — every time they build there, they find more skeletons.”

  “Really?” Jocelyn asked.

  “That’s another story,” Seth said. “We were there looking at these bones, and Mitch lights up a cigarette. Well, since the last time we’d been there, Clinton had signed an executive order mandating no smoking in Federal Buildings. Before that, everyone smoked everywhere. So Mitch was smoking. We’re following the head of security to the remains, and he doesn’t say anything about the ban. Mitch lights another on our way into the building, and the head of security stops. He tells us that smoking is not allowed in Federal buildings.”

  Seth raised his eyebrows.

  “It seems crazy today, but we’d never even heard of such a radical idea,” Seth said. “The head of security points behind us. I turned around and saw all of the people lined up under the awning. They were out there puffing on their cigarettes even though it was snowing.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” Seth said. “Something about the people huddled together in the wet snow. It made me think that maybe our perp’s victims were cigarette smokers. No cell phones, of course, so I went inside to call the coroner. By that time, we had so many bodies.”

  Seth shook his head at horror.

  “She and her team had cataloged all of the injuries and every characteristic of the people down to their ring size and shade of nail polish,” Seth said. “I didn’t have it in front of me, so I called her to ask about the smoking.”

  “Were they smokers?” Jocelyn asked.

  “More than half,” Seth said.

  “72 percent,” Jocelyn said. “That’s what we have on your page of our website.”

  Seth nodded to acknowledge her.

  “So there I am, standing in the freezing fucking cold next to Mitch while he smoked,” Seth said. “I just kept thinking that this had to be it. It felt like the answer. But they weren’t all smokers. Mitch asked me what was going on, so I told him. And he laughed at me.”

  “Laughed?” Jocelyn asked.

  “He pointed out, one at a time, all of the non-smokers who were standing in the snow to talk to their friend,” Seth said.

  “Like you,” Jocelyn said.

  “Like me,” Seth said. “From there, we started targeting where people bought cigarettes. There weren’t as many places then as there are now. At that time, cigarettes were sold only at liquor stores and gas stations. We figured that our perpetrator might have bought cigarettes near the site of victim one’s abduction. Of course, we didn’t have technology to just punch it in to our phones or cars. I called the station and found Ferg. His crime lab had mapped out all of the murder sites on the wall. He and some kid . . .”

  “That would be me!” yelled the head of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s bone lab from the middle of the room. He waved his hand in the air. A smattering of clapping came from people around the room.

  Unaware of the room, Seth continued with his answer.

  “ . . . found a gas station near where our first couple was found. I mean, it’s crazy,” Seth said. “Especially looking back at it. At that time, if you missed the news or didn’t read the newspaper, you had no idea what was going on. Stories might go out twice, maybe three times. I thought we’d flooded Denver and the surrounding areas with information about this case.

  “When we got to the gas station, the attendant had no idea what we were talking about. Not a thing. His boss, the owner, was there. The owner remembered hearing someone talk about some case, but he couldn’t recall the details. Neither one of them knew any more than someone . . .” Seth held up one finger, “ . . .had died on the nearby trails. That wasn’t all that unusual.”


  “That is hard to believe,” Jocelyn said.

  “We were so desperate and under so much pressure that we carried pictures of the victims with us,” Seth said. “I showed him pictures of the first couple. The owner said that the man, Victim One, had come into the gas station three or four times a week for years. He’d stopped a year or so ago. The owner knew Victim One’s name, his address, and even knew the name of the woman, Victim Two, which, of course, we already had from the family. It was just confirmation that we were in the right place.”

  “Was victim one a smoker?” Jocelyn asked.

  “He was,” Seth said. “The gas station owner said that he bought cigarettes on his way to work and always bought a fresh pack of cigarettes on his way into the forest. Kind of a last stop before heading out for weeks at a time. He’d told the owner that he just couldn’t enjoy the great outdoors without a smoke. So we were pretty sure we had the right victims. Mitch was looking sideways at the owner and the attendant.”

  “They seem like good suspects,” Jocelyn said.

  “Exactly,” Seth said. “The owner catches Mitch sizing them up and says, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not us, and I can prove it.’”

  Seth shook his head in a kind of disbelief.

  “How?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Video surveillance,” Seth said. “The owner had tried out a video surveillance service.”

  “At the time Victim One came in?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Right,” Seth said. “The service was expensive, but he got a three-month trial for free from his wife’s cousin’s husband, or something like that. The owner ran the system for three months, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In the end, he decided that his old system worked well enough. He didn’t need to spend the money.”

  “But here’s the thing — this new system recorded onto discs. His old system was a tape system that he recorded over. He had all of the discs from the time period we’d given him.”

  “How did you know when . . .?” Jocelyn asked. She shook her head at the incredible nature of this turn of events.

  “The couple had left a note in their car,” Seth said. “It had the date on it, so we knew when they left to go for their hike. It just happened to be a few weeks after they wrote that note that the gas station owner had stopped the surveillance service. The owner didn’t have any use for the discs, so he gave them to us. Just like, ‘Here.’

  “We went back home to my house. I set up a computer for us to watch it. We took turns watching them, starting with the day the couple went missing. I played the piano while Mitch watched. When I was watching, Mitch was sleeping.”

  “They were on the surveillance?” Jocelyn asked.

  Seth nodded.

  “I was wide awake, but Mitch was sick, and he . . .,” Seth said. “He fell asleep after watching the boring surveillance. I guess I was upset about Mitch being sick and this case and everything. I didn’t want to show my face to my mother without solving this case.”

  “The gas station owner had three months of tapes,” Seth said. He shook his head. “We were able to find the victims on the tape, no problem. But it wasn’t really clear. We had to be sure, really sure, that it was our vic. That means that we had to watch three months of tape.”

  “Why does that matter?” Jocelyn asked.

  “After watching the surveillance footage a few times, I began to see the patterns of people,” Seth said. “Like the ocean waves. The gas station regulars have their own ebb and flow. Some people came in the mornings and evenings. Other people just came in during the early morning or late night. It wasn’t a super busy place . . .”

  “The reason the owner didn’t get the expensive system,” Jocelyn said.

  “Exactly,” Seth said. “He testified that the expensive system wasn’t worth the money. God, it was gold to us.”

  “Why?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Because I became familiar with who came and went in the gas station,” Seth said. “I saw him on the discs.”

  “Who?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Seurat,” Seth said. “Of course, I didn’t know that was his name. To me, he was just a non-descript, scruffy-looking guy with brown hair. A regular, but only for a month. He came into that gas station for supplies — once a week, like clockwork. Then he never went back — at least not on those surveillance tapes. When we knew who he was, we were able to track his purchases to see that he came in to buy supplies just for that month. He never came back. The gas station owner said the very same thing.”

  “Why is that important?” Jocelyn asked.

  “We were building a case,” Seth said. “Our perpetrator kept his victims for at least a month.”

  “Oh, I see,” Jocelyn said. “He was buying supplies for these victims.”

  “And his misdeeds,” Seth said with a nod. “Duct tape, wire, batteries — you can buy most of the supplies to torture someone at gas stations. Even today.”

  “Good to know,” Jocelyn said in a vague tone.

  Seth grinned.

  “So I there I was, watching these surveillance discs and I notice Seurat,” Seth said. “He was in the store when the couple came in.”

  “Victim One and Victim Two,” Jocelyn said.

  “Exactly,” Seth said. “Seurat is in the gas station when Victim One buys a pack of cigarettes. Just outside the door, the man, Victim One, lights a cigarette and gives it to his lady, Victim Two. Then he lights one for himself. This guy walks out just behind them. You can’t really see it on the tape — I’d bet you could count their nostril hairs with the technology available now. But then, you could just see them. This guy says something to the man, you know, Victim One. The man laughs and nods. The couple walks toward their car. They leave, and the guy follows them.”

  Seth nodded.

  “The guy comes into the gas station for four weeks like clockwork and then never comes back,” Jocelyn said.

  “We had enough to start looking for this guy, if only to ask him questions,” Seth said. “Then it was just old-fashioned police work. We had this guy’s license plate off the surveillance video. We track the vehicle only to find out that he’d sold it. That gave us a better description of the guy. The guy who bought the car worked with the sketch artist so we got an image of someone it might be.”

  Seth shook his head.

  “It was just one tiny step at a time,” Seth said. “A friend of the gas station owner told the gas station owner that he’d rented his son’s house while the son was deployed. The renter had left it a complete mess. The gas station owner’s friend didn’t know what to do with it because, according to the friend, ‘his renter had killed a bunch of deer or something in the place.’ The father was in and out of the hospital for more than a year. He hadn’t been to the house since he’d handed over the keys to the renter. He went to check on it because his son was coming home. That was maybe three days after we’d found this guy on those discs.

  “We went to the son’s house,” Seth said. “Forensics did their thing. After months and months of no progress, suddenly we had the location of what we thought were his first murders. The guy had given a phony name for his vehicle registration, but the rental application required a credit check. He’d given his actual social security number.

  “Now, we had a name,” Seth said. “From a name, we got a picture. From a picture, we got sightings. From sightings, we tried to pick him up. Missed. Tried again. Missed again. That kept going — day and night. We were on his heels. A month, maybe six weeks, of no sleep. We tracked down every lead no matter how big or small. Then he got pulled over for something stupid — broken taillight, swerving, not stopping at a stop sign, something dumb, just outside of Fraser. He was in custody into Grant County. The freakin’ governor sent the state police’s entire armed response squad to pick him up and bring him to Denver. All of the mysteries, all of the sleepless nights, all of the doubt, and there we were — sitting in a room with this odd looking, non-descript brown-haired guy. I d
on’t think we asked him even one question. I mean, we have the whole thing on tape, of course. But my memory is that we sat down on our side of the table, and he started bragging about his escapades as a murderer.”

  Seth chuckled and shook his head.

  “What happened next?” Jocelyn asked.

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  Sixteen

  Ava shut off the tape.

  “The case files document all of those ‘little steps,’” Ava said. “Seth is a meticulous note-taker.”

  She looked out to the audience. Many of them were nodding their heads.

  “Seurat bragged about his deeds, but he refused to say that he was guilty,” Ava said. “Seurat told O’Malley — on tape no less — that he wanted the world to know what he’d done. The only way to do that was to have a ‘real trial, like in the old days.’ They sent the evidence to the Grand Jury — 5th Amendment and all. The Grand Jury reviewed the evidence and called for a trial.

  “Of course, the trial was a circus. The networks sent correspondents to Denver. The suspect was ferried from isolation in the Denver Jail to the trial. An angry mob of people lined the route every day. The crowd threw rocks and bottles. A couple of times, Molotov Cocktails were thrown at the van. They had to start using three and four vans. It was a scene.”

  Ava nodded.

  “As you know, my dad was the State Attorney,” Ava said. “He got Beth and me into the trial. We went every single day. It was . . . well, a life-changing experience.”

  A hand shot up near the back.

  “Now, Special Agent Lithus has asked me to go through the trial with you,” Ava said. “According to my lab technicians, you’ve been through the tapes in excruciating detail this morning. If you have questions about what happened, please feel free to ask me — now or anytime, really.”

  Ava pointed to the man whose hand was raised.

  “Can we ask an O’Malley question?” the man asked.